Selling online is quickly becoming a standard across many businesses. Especially now, this is a great opportunity to start a new business. Many of you are looking at how to sell online, even if it can be a little scary. But making plans and being careful can help you start a business without needing to break the bank.
While there are some necessary costs involved, if you're wise about where you spend your money, you can quickly get an online store up and running and make sales while you grow.
We've come up with five steps to point you in the right direction.
1. Choose the Right Product to Sell
This is one of the most important things you need to consider when you want to start selling online. What product are you going to sell? While it's easy to choose from things that you see selling around you, or things that you like buying yourself, there are some things you need to consider:
A. Who is going to buy your product? Sometimes, you aren't your own target buyers, and that's okay. The important thing is that you know there are people who will buy your product.
B. How much can you get the item and how much can you sell it for? There are two ways to get your products: buy it from somewhere, or make it yourself. This is a good indicator of how much you need to spend for your products, too.
You will be limited by how much you can put into buying or making your product, and that's okay. You can always expand into other things later. But make sure your base item fits within your budget for things to sell.
It's also best to focus on one product type, too. Bags? Plants? Cakes? Choose one to start with and expand later. Focus on selling your flagship product well.
2. Pick the Right Shop Name
Picking your shop name can be one of the most fun activities you can do. The sky's the limit! Pick one that you like, pick one that is catchy. Your customers will know you as your shop name, so pick carefully!
But aside from your own preferences, there are some things you need to consider when picking your shop name: your possible domain name or social media usernames. While you might not need a domain name immediately (especially if you're working on a budget), it's important to take into consideration your Facebook page, Instagram handle, or marketplace username (depending on where you start selling).
Make sure your planned name is also easy to say out loud, if you're going to focus on selling on Facebook or Instagram most especially. You shouldn't have to explain how to spell your page address to your customers! Stay away from mixing digits with spelled numbers and from punctuation in your usernames (i.e. hyphens and periods).
3. Build Your Online Store
Think about your online store as your shopfront. This is where your customers will go to buy from you. It’s important to make sure that it’s easy for them to navigate and buy from!
As with physical stores, there are two ways to go about it: making your own store, or hiring someone to get it done for you. There are also in-between solutions, of course.
If you know how to make websites, that’s great! You can use your knowledge to set an online store up from scratch or using open source software.
Otherwise, you can get help from others or sign up to third party services to help you. If you have the budget to spend on a domain and website, you can look to services like Shopify to help you build up a website.
If you don’t, no sweat. You can start selling right from Facebook or Instagram, which is free! You can sell within Messenger and talk to your customers as the orders come in. This can be the easiest way to start your selling with the least money out. And once you’ve got a steady stream too, it’s easy to upgrade your shop and get your own chatbot to handle orders, so that you have more time to focus on other aspects of your online store.
4. Set Up Payments and Shipping
Payments and shipping are very important and easy to forget about when thinking about selling! But they’re essential pieces of your online store.
Are you taking payments via bank transfer, or signing up with online wallets like Paypal and GCash to accept money from your customers? Depending on which services you sign up for to get your online shop, sometimes they also handle payments (or even shipping) themselves--Shopee has their own in-platform wallet, Chatbuddy has addons for taking payments through the chatbot.
Make sure that it’s easy for your customers to send you payment online, because otherwise they might give up and not buy from you after all. Cash on delivery is also an option, but you will need to pick your shipping provider carefully (unless you’re doing deliveries yourself).
Shipping is important. Consider your own experiences with shipping--how did you like getting your online purchases? Speed, location, and cost is always a factor. You can even start doing the deliveries yourself if you’re focusing on nearby locations when you start, but take into consideration the time and effort and indirect costs involved.
Otherwise it might be a good thing to look at local courier options, especially if you want to start selling to a wider market as well.
5. Promote and Market Your Shop
You’ve got your store--now it’s time to tell everyone about it! While you might have a great store and great products, if people don’t know about it, they won’t go to it!
Paying for ads to your store and products on platforms like Facebook is definitely one way to go about promoting your store. But if you don’t have the budget for it when you start, don’t worry. There are many things you can do to try and get your products out there.
Interact with your customers on your social media accounts -- Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, your focus is up to you. Make sure you have beautiful pictures of what you're selling. While it's a given to talk about your product, don't sell it too hard--talk about things related to your products, too. If you're selling pet food, for example, why not talk about your pets, or how to care for your pets?
Further down the line, look into setting up email newsletters, or even SMS newsletters. These are a great way to give people updates about what you're selling, promotions you're running, and the like. Get them to sign up using a great lead magnet, reward them for doing so, and you can start building up a loyal customer base!
Conclusion
Selling online isn’t rocket science. There are many great resources that you can use to start your ecommerce journey. Before you know it, you could be in the middle of a bustling online store!
Remember these five simple steps:
- Choose the right product to sell
- Pick the right shop name
- Build your online store
- Set up payments and shipping
- Promote and market your shop
This is a great time to start selling online and adding to your income. It’s easier now than ever before, whether you want to set up a beautiful website for your shop or sell on Messenger with chatbots. You only have to start now.